Branding 101: The importance of Brand Management

Brand Management branding processes

Dec 17, 2019

Brand Management can be a lot to handle, and marketers are often stuck in a time squeeze where daily tasks such as brand maintenance has the tendency of consuming more time than you have. Instead of spending time on value-added brand strategy tasks you know is necessary if you are going to reach your brand goals and growth, your are stuck in a ad hoc loop.

Luckily there is hope. With the right branding tools in place, working with brand management strategies becomes easy and efficient.

Successful brands are made from successful brand management strategies

Every day we are in contact with hundreds of different brands. Either through websites, TV, social media platforms or in stores, brands and content takes up space – both consciously and unconsciously.

To stand out and being noticeable among all these brands demands serious efforts and proper branding processes. The companies that succeed are those who accomplish consistency and a recognizable brand. Research shows that it takes about five to seven interactions with a brand before a consumer actually remembers the sender. And also, 91% of all consumers wish to buy from a recognizable brand. In other words, brand recognition is crucial in the battle for consumers attention and you don't get there by chance.

Challenges with managing a brand

Less than 10% of B2B companies consider their branding to be consistent. Additionally, only 25% claims that they stick to their brand guidelines. Properly structured brand management processes are becoming rare, and this can lead to a series of challenges for your brand building.

Challenge 1 – The amount of brand assets is overwhelming

Marketers and brand managers, to say the least, tends to have a lot on their plate and often lack the proper tools to keep more than one ball in the air. According to Impact research, many marketers struggle to locate company assets and data. They lack a single platform or the right tools to maintain efficient marketing communication, educate fellow colleagues, communicate across the company, while having complete overview of all assets. This results in difficulties maintaining brand consistency and proper communication, ultimately resulting in poor brand management.

Also read: This is how you structure your brand and marketing assets

Challenge 2 – Lack of necessary access to brand asset

Even when companies have a way of managing and storing brand assets and marketing collateral, access is still a challenge. If it is not stored and structured properly, and access can not be granted or removed with simplicity, the archive does not provide any real value.

Key employees simply cannot afford to have limited access to necessary assets, nor can we demand that they ask for permission every time. Simultaneously, limited access of certain elements is necessary with selected departments to avoid overwhelming everyone with everything. If you unintentionally provide access to the wrong person, you also run the risk of unwanted asset changes. Correct access to your company’s assets is crucial.

And what happens if access is unavailable? That's right. Time and resources goes to waste creating assets that already exists, and who's to say this is created according to the brand guidelines? The ball is rolling, next thing you know.. Brand inconsistency is a fact.

Challenge 3 – Increased demands for personalization

Brand building is becoming increasingly more complexed and consumer adaption is a requirement. Personalized branded content is more important than ever, and more than one department or team will have the need to adapt and localize marketing collateral and brand assets while staying on brand. However, with too much freedom you run the risk of off-brand content that breaks the brand guidelines. Without a proper branding system it will be impossible to manage and personalize brand assets perfectly.

The importance of brand management

Overcoming the challenges above demands a proper system. A system that enables effective brand management and seeks to improve how you stay true to your brand strategies. Let's take a look at what a brand management platform has to offer.

The benefits of an all-in-one Brand Management platform

You can beat the mentioned challenges and many more by collecting everything in one single platform, online. Nevertheless, keep in mind that you will need your entire company to embrace your branding processes if you want to succeed. And you also need to organize your brand to fit company needs, not just the marketing team.

You simply cannot afford a fragmented approach to your brand management where your brand identity, brand assets and brand strategy is separated. Instead, you need to look for a brand management platform where you can manage everything about your brand and marketing efforts in one single place. This way you’ll keep your brand dynamic and updated, and company operations are streamlined for efficiency.

Establish online brand guidelines

Your brand is a living thing in constant change based on everything from market trends to consumer needs or other recent events. In other words, many factors have an impact on your brand and to stay ahead and in front of your competitors, you need a brand that is adaptable. Technology that enables an all-in-one solution for dynamic brand management where brand guidelines are online and proper handling of brand assets is at ease is becoming more and more important.

Online brand guidelines will put your brand and its assets into context, making your brand understandable for everyone in your company. Enabling consistency, regardless of how many times you need to change your guidelines.

Also read: How to use brand guidelines for proper brand management

Structure your brand assets

As previously mentioned, you probably have a huge amount of brand assets that you need to have control. Managing formats, file types, access, localization and more is more than a handful. With an all-in-one digital asset solution, collecting, organizing, and distributing your assets is easy.

Also read: This is how you organize your assets

Make your brand adjustable

As mentioned, localization and personalization is becoming the standard. With an increasing amount of platforms and media channels you need brand presence in, manually handling these adjustments is more than a marketing team can handle.

An all-in-one solution is again the answer to your worries. With template technology, anyone can easily adapt the brand assets or marketing collateral they need, without ever breaking the brand guidelines.

Enable seamless market planning

Every campaign launch is an opportunity for brand success or failure, depending on the execution. A brand management platform makes planning and execution easier. With the proper tools and features at hand, coordinating activities and aligning teams is simple, so is distributing the necessary campaign material – timely and organized.

The branding solution you need

With an all-in-one brand management platform you’ll be on top of your game

Marketing efficiency is at ease
Branding processes are under control
Time-to-market is speedy
Your brand is always updated and on brand
Your brand is operational
Company operations are streamlined
Building your brand from the inside out is easy
Successful brand management strategy is within reach

Fore more insight on the importance of brand management and why you should consider investing in it, check out our free whitepaper.